July 17, 2025

Facebook Blocks News in Australia, Diverging With Google on Proposed Law

“Google is already used to playing a different game in every different country,” Siva Vaidhyanathan, a media studies professor at the University of Virginia, said of the companies’ different approaches. While he said Facebook was taking what it considers a moral stance, Google “may have gotten beyond this fantasy of a universalized approach to doing business in the world.”

Paul Fletcher, Australia’s communications minister, said the government would move forward with the legislation even as conversations with Facebook continue.

In interviews, he praised Google for engaging with the process and suggested that Facebook would be closely scrutinized for deciding to “remove all authoritative and credible news sources from the platform.” In an interview with 2GB radio, Mr. Fletcher added that the decision “certainly raises issues about the credibility of information on the platform.”

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, the country’s top competition authority, has spent the past year drafting a bill for the Australian Parliament that would require Facebook and Google to negotiate with media publishers and pay them for content. The legislation includes a code of conduct that would allow media companies to bargain individually or collectively with digital platforms over the value of their news content.

Google and Facebook saw the proposed legislation as a worrisome precedent. As the negotiations over the proposal continued throughout 2020, both companies openly said that they might have to resort to more drastic measures against it.

In August, Facebook said it would block users and news organizations in Australia from sharing local and international news stories on its social network and Instagram if the bill were to move forward. Last month, Google also threatened to make its search engine unavailable in Australia if the government approved the legislation.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/17/technology/facebook-google-australia-news.html

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